Mail held at Hamilton postal facility to be irradiated

Thousands of letters and packages held at the contaminated Hamilton postal facility will be irradiated to destroy anthrax bacteria before being delivered to the University, student financial services manager Keith Sipple said yesterday. The letters have been held since the discovery of anthrax at the facility more than six weeks ago, he said.

The held mail will be irradiated at a facility in Bridgeport, N.J., and the U.S. Postal Service will incur the cost of the treatment, according to Sipple. After the letters are irradiated, the U.S.P.S. will put them into transparent plastic bags and place labels on packages to warn customers that the letters were treated and that they are now safe to handle, he said.

Sipple sent out a campus-wide e-mail yesterday that included a warning that the irradiation process can cause damage to some products in the mail, including biological samples, food, medicine and electronic devices. Sipple added in the e-mail that "we have been assured that the irradiation process itself is safe."

He also said that the treatment and delivery of these items will be a gradual process and that the items will be delivered with other regular mail.

Sipple said that the University administration "is not getting a lot of complaints" about delayed delivery and suggested that this was because "a lot of people are aware that the [Hamilton] facility was closed." That facility has yet to be reopened, he said.

In the immediate future, the University is only allowing permanent full-time employees to handle mail, Sipple said. University mail services is now conducting mail delivery in the residential colleges because students who normally perform this function are currently prohibited from doing so, he added.

Sipple said these policy changes have probably increased the cost of mail delivery because the wages of permanent employees are higher than those of student workers.

Since the anthrax scare began more than six weeks ago, the University has organized several safety training sessions for bulk mail handlers that were also open to the community. It was suggested at these sessions that mail handlers wear gloves as a precautionary measure.